With two episodes left, The Terror: Devil in Silver struggles with pacing
The era of 22 episode seasons has long been over, but with only six episodes in its season order, The Terror: Devil In Silver attempts to make up for previous complaints of the series drawing out its plot. Considering that this season of The Terror adapts a 400-something page novel, Episode 3 and 4 of the season continue diving into the mystery of the creature hidden in New Hyde Hospital as Pepper (Dan Stevens) continues to scheme for a way out of his involuntary commitment. Director Emmanuel Osei-Kuffour Jr, known for Welcome To Blumhouse: Black Box and assorted directing credits for shows like Shogun and The Midnight Club, helms Episode 3 & 4 with teleplays by Adria Long and Vanessa Baden Kelly.
Episode 3 begins with Pepper waking up, discovering he has been wounded by the strange creature living in the hospital; however, psychiatric staff dismiss his concerns about what attacked him, claiming his injuries are self-inflicted. But this messaging directly contradicts what the other residents are saying, as Pepper’s roommate Coffee (Chinaza Uche) claims the creature that lives behind the silver door is indeed The Devil. Pepper seeks out input from the other residents, seemingly unconvinced of Coffee’s explanation, until he learns that this creature is indeed a long-time patient of the mental institute. Meanwhile, Pepper’s estranged son Anthony (Hayward Leach) is unable to end Pepper’s involuntary commitment, thus forcing Pepper to attempt another escape. Urging the other patients to skip their meds before a scheduled outing to get pizza in the city, Pepper manages to distract the hospital staff by riling up his peers and egging on the local patrons to come to blows regarding their unmedicated behavior. However, when opportunity presents itself for Pepper’s escape, he instead chooses to stay and get to the bottom of what is going on in New Hyde Hospital.
Episode 4 follows Pepper’s attempts to discover more about what resides behind the psychiatric wing’s silver door. Recruiting Coffee for this scheme, the pair attempt to use stolen keys to bypass various security checkpoints; however, the guards appear hypervigilant after the incident at the pizza parlor in Episode 3, preventing this from being an easy in and out operation. Rather, Pepper finds himself trusting Dorry (Judith Light) who has seemingly found a way to move through the spaces between the walls of the hospital undetected. Upon learning that Dorry is helping Pepper, Coffee begins to panic, showing a clear distrust towards the seemingly harmless old woman. As Coffee attempts to interfere with Dorry & Pepper’s teamup, we learn that Dorry has been at the hospital for decades, the victim of an early attempt at an unsuccessful lobotomy by the hospital’s old main doctor Dr. Walter (John Benjamin Hickey). Instead of leading Pepper to the room behind the silver door, Dorry brings Pepper to Dr. Walter who is revealed to be some sort of supernatural entity, feeding off the trauma of the patients in a sort of talk therapy vampirism that overwhelms Pepper.
Meanwhile, Coffee successfully manages to sneak into the room behind the silver door, discovering it's full of guts and gore. Before he can make sense of this, Coffee is chased out of the room by the bull-headed man. But Coffee’s timing is off, as police arrive after Dr. Anand (Aasif Mandvi) reports a dangerous patient on the New Hyde campus. Coffee, smeared in blood and filth, is mistaken as this patient and shot to death before he can tell the others what is behind the door.
While The Terror: Devil in Silver continues to adapt the source material in ways that will excite horror fans, the show’s pacing and shift to a shorter episode order is to its slight detriment. As Pepper tries to escape, we are introduced to a large rotating cast of characters as the world of New Hyde Hospital is fleshed out with additional patients and backstory; however, it comes in such a way that the show’s character building feels a bit shallow. While episode 4 ends with a major character death, the audience is left with a somewhat shallow understanding of characters to the point that it is hard to care for them in the midst of suffering. Even though complaints for Season 2 of The Terror tend to be about its overlong nature & drawing out of plot points, The Terror: Devil in Silver seems to suffer a bit from the opposite issue. Rather than us coming to know the characters over several episodes, we are often rushed through plotlines at the sake of allowing the audience to care about the show’s characters before major happenstances occur to them. With only two episodes left, the question remains: how exactly is The Terror: Devil in Silver going to stick its landing?
